San Francisco- and Tokyo-headquartered gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), a venture capital firm that focuses on blockchain startups, said it has launched a new $110 million early-stage fund.
The venture capital firm’s second fund aims to back approximately 50 blockchain companies in the early stage from pre-seed to seed, managing partner of gCC Rui Zhang told TechCrunch. Industries include blockchain games, infrastructure, web3 applications, tools, DeFi (decentralized finance)/CeFi (centralized finance), DAOs and guilds. The check size will range between $500,000 to $5 million per investment through initial and follow-on investments. The second fund of gCC will invest in both equity and tokens.
“We live in the Experimental Age,” said Miko Matsumura, managing partner of gumi Cryptos Capital. “Tokens represent monetary experimentation powering web3, DAOs and guilds are governance experiments. NFTs are experimental digital assets. The metaverse is a collection of experimental realities.”
Its limited partners include Japanese game company gumi, Shinsei Bank, Cygames, Mistletoe Venture Partners, Marui Group, GMP Capital and Polygon.
Three managing partners of gumi Cryptos Capital, Hironao Kunimitsu, Zhang and Matsumura will lead gCC Fund II.
Despite the similarities in branding, Zhang told TechCrunch gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) is not a subsidiary or corporate venture capital arm of gumi, though Zhang notably still holds a position as a vice president at gumi in addition to his role as a managing partner at gCC.
Zhang said that the second fund has already made nine investments as the lead investor or co-lead investor, including Proof of Learn, XY Finance, Solv Finance and Alliance Labs.
The new vehicle is almost five times larger than the $21 million gumi Cryptos Capital Fund I, which backed 36 portfolio companies in their seed round fundings, including NFT marketplace OpenSea, Yield Guild Gaming, Celsius Network, Qredo, Agoric, Astar, 1inch and VEGA. The firm said its first fund, gCC fund I, attained a 24.6x return on capital employed (TVPI) as of January 2022.
“We have unique access to both Silicon Valley startup culture and capital markets as well as access to the Japan market,” said Kunimitsu. “Japan is also home to unique intellectual property assets, especially in the fast-growing gaming sector.”